Posted on 02/08/2025 2:12:47 PM PST by Twotone
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was a hit when it was released in 1947, the tenth-biggest grossing film of that year, and it's hard not to see why. A romantic but not melodramatic story, it had just enough wry comedy to draw an audience of both men and women, and a veneer of literate quality that lands it square in that middlebrow sweet spot that once did a lot to broaden any film's appeal.
You can even go a step further and speculate that the romance at its centre, between a young widow and a recently deceased ghost, might have resonated with all the women who had lost loved ones during the war that had concluded just two years previous. There were, to be sure, a lot of ghosts wandering around America and the world at the time, in a miasma of shared grief that would take years to dissipate.
Just three years earlier the first modern ghost story picture was released with The Uninvited, the same year that tough cop Dana Andrews had fallen in love with a (presumably) dead woman in Laura. Mrs. Muir was played by the titular Laura, Gene Tierney, so the ground had been prepared for a movie about terror-free supernatural amour fou, set at the turn of the 20th century, which happened to be the era of choice for contemporary nostalgia, evoked in films as different as Meet Me in St. Louis, Life with Father, The Magnificent Ambersons and I Remember Mama.
Which is to say that The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is the sort of film that audiences would have settled into like a warm bath. The film's credits roll over Bernard Herrmann's ominous theme (he considered it his best score), hinting at spectral events to come...
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Beautiful musical score.
Most young people will not watch it because it is “black and white” but it is worth the time (as are many old movies).
Beautiful set too! And Natalie Wood!
One of my favorite movies from the 4pm showing after grammar school.
Ghost and Mrs Muir - Yesterday When I Was Young - Charles Aznavour
https://youtu.be/-f8nn49_P00
My favorite “Halloween” story (ghost story) by far. Got the book for Christmas when I was 12. I have used photos of the house interior as desktop backgrounds.
I have memories of the TV show.
Agree. A lovely movie & a lovely song.
I remember the ending had me in tears and I was only 6 years old. Gave me a foundation of hope that I carry to this day.
“”””You can even go a step further and speculate that the romance at its centre, between a young widow and a recently deceased ghost, might have resonated with all the women who had lost loved ones during the war that had concluded just two years previous. There were, to be sure, a lot of ghosts wandering around America and the world at the time, in a miasma of shared grief that would take years to dissipate.””””
I’m glad the world didn’t wallow in it, but what a vast realm of sadness and loss must have been stored in the world’s population, that they took to their graves.
Loved her in Laura. She was kind of quirky and hooked up with Howard Hughes and it was rumored she was why he got reclusive.
Acutally there was an even earlier film written by Noel Coward called “Blythe Spirit” with Rex Harrison and also was also all out funny.
Another film kind of in the same vein was I Married A Witch with Frederic March and Veronica Lake.
There was also another movie like that called Portrait of Jennie with Jospeh Cotten and Jennifer Jones
I loved that movie..😊
“….in a miasma of shared grief that would take years to dissipate.””””
It may not have quite dissipated yet.
In First Calvary cemetery in Maspeth, Queens, there’s an almost life size carving of a soldier in uniform. He’s young and Clark Gable-ish down to the pencil line mustache and the cigarette dangling from the fingers of his right hand at his side. It is clearly carved from a photograph, perhaps the last one taken as he left for the war. Between his epitaph which placed him among the elect of all the world for his willing sacrifice and the epitaph of the mother, who passed only a few years later which referenced her lost son and her own broken heart, that miasma of grief of which you speak is absolutely palpable.
Do you have a last name I would love to see it at FIND A GRAVE
I'll never forget that ending when he took her hand in that chair, for the rest of my life.
MAD Magazine (I think) did a good spoof on the series back in the day.
No but I’ll take a pic next week when I’m in there. The carving stands over the family’s underground vault. I don’t know if his remains are buried where he fell or if they were brought back home. The family had money as the vault and memorial attest and his mother may have had him brought back. I think I’d be a little surprised if she didn’t.
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